The Prophet Jeremiah

According
to the book, the Prophet Jeremiah was a son of a priest from Anatot in the land of Benjamin, who lived in the last years of
the Kingdom of Judah just prior to,
during, and immediately after the siege of Jerusalem, culminating in the destruction of Solomon's
Temple and the raiding of the city by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
According to the book, for a quarter century prior to the
destruction, Jeremiah repeatedly issued prophecies predicting God's
forthcoming judgment; advocating the Jews put down their idols and
repent in hopes of turning away God's judgment and fulfilling their
destiny as his chosen people. Jeremiah's fellow Jews refused to
heed his warnings and did not repent. His efforts failed and he
witnessed the destruction of everything he knew, the exile of the Jewish elite to Babylonia, and the
fleeing of the remainder to Egypt.

The book of Jeremiah depicts a remarkably introspective prophet, a
prophet who was impetuous and often
angered by the role into which he has been thrust. Jeremiah
alternates efforts to warn the people with pleas to God for mercy
until he is ordered to "pray no more for this people." He engages
in extensive performance art,
walking about in the streets with a yoke about his neck and
engaging in other efforts to attract attention. He is taunted and
retaliates; he is thrown in jail as the result. At one point he is
thrown into a pit to die. He is often bitter about his experience
and expresses his anger and frustration freely.

Prophecies of Jeremiah

Threats against the "unfaithful shepherds" (i.e., the
prophets), the promise of peace and of the real shepherd (after
597), and warnings against false prophets and godless priests
(perhaps in the time of Jehoiakim; 23:1-8,
9-40);

Vision of the two baskets of figs, illustrating the fate of the
captives and of those who were left behind, from the period after
the first deportation by Nebuchadnezzar, in 597 (chapter 24);

Threats of punishments to be inflicted on Judah and the
surrounding nations, the fourth year of Jehoiakim, i.e., the year
of the Battle of Carchemish
(605; chapter 25);

The first of the historical passages recounting Jeremiah's
prophecy in the Temple (compare chapter 7), his arrest, his
threatened death, and his rescue, in which connection the martyrdom
of the prophet Uriah is briefly mentioned (chapter 26).

Protection for Israel following the period of destruction and
exile

Utterances from the time of Zedekiah (see § II.), with an
appendix, the last connected prophecy of any length, in chapter 35
, treating of the fidelity of the Rechabites and of the
unfaithfulness of Judah. This dates from a somewhat earlier period,
that of Jehoiakim (because certainly before 597), and thus forms a
transition to the first passages of the narrative sections.

Jeremiah's prophecies are noted for the frequent repetitions found
in them of the same words, phrases, and imagery. They cover the
period of about 50 years. They are not in chronological
order.

The Septuagint (Greek or 'LXX') version of this book is, in
its arrangement and in other particulars, different from the
Masoretic Hebrew. The Septuagint does not
include 10:6-8; 25:14; 27:19-22; 29:16-20; 33:14-26; 39:4-13; 52:2,
3, 15, 28-30, etc. In all, about 2,700 words found in the Masoretic
text are not found in the Septuagint. Also, the 'Oracles against
the Nations', that appear as chapters 46-51 in the Masoretic and
most dependent versions, in the Septuagint are located right after
25:13, and in a different order.

According to the Jewish
Encyclopedia, "a comparison of the Masoretic text with the
Septuagint throws some light on the last phase in the history of
the origin of the Book of Jeremiah, inasmuch as the translation
into Greek was already under way before the work on the Hebrew book
had come to an end...The two texts differ above all in
that the Septuagint is much shorter...Even if the text of
the Septuagint is proved to be the older, it does not necessarily
follow that all these variations first arose after the Greek
translation had been made, because two different editions of the
same text might have been in process of development side by
side..."

The Septuagint version of Jeremiah also includes the Book of Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah. Jerome's Prologue to Jeremiah says he excluded them:
"And the Book of Baruch, his scribe, which is neither read nor
found among the Hebrews, we have omitted, standing ready, because
of these things, for all the curses from the jealous, to whom it is
necessary for me to respond through a separate short work. And I
suffer because you think this. Otherwise, for the benefit of the
wicked, it was more proper to set a limit for their rage by my
silence, rather than any new things written to provoke daily the
insanity of the envious." But the Canon
of Trent included them as "Ieremias cum Baruch" (Jeremiah with
Baruch), being the Epistle or Letter of Jeremiah in the Vulgate.

Qumran version

Parts of
the Book of Jeremiah have also been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in cave 4 in Qumran.
These texts, in Hebrew, correspond both to the Masoretic Text and
the Septuagint Text. This discovery has shed much light on the
differences between the two versions; while it was previously
maintained that the Greek Septuagint (the version used by the
earliest Christians) was only a poor translation, professor
Emanuel Tov, senior editor of the Dead
Sea Scrolls' publication, wrote that the Masoretic edition either
represents a substantial rewriting of the original Hebrew, or there
had previously been two different versions of the text.